Tuesday, 24 September 2013

Want to reduce the deficit? Legalise cannabis.

By Amanda Feilding.

The current British government has made
reducing the large budget deficit the centrepiece of its effort to
steer the United Kingdom out of the economic and fiscal crisis into
which it was plunged by the financial collapse in 2008.

This intention to rein in public
expenditure raises a question. Why are the prime minister and the
coalition still clinging to drug policies that are obviously
expensive and demonstrably counterproductive?

Is it not time for the government and
political leaders in the United Kingdom to sit down together for a
serious conversation, focused on the immense savings that can be
reaped by devising and implementing more rational alternatives to the
present approach to cannabis?

It is no longer controversial to say
that the United Kingdom's drug policies—like the prevailing drug
policies in the Western world—have failed at every level. They have
effectively handed over an immensely lucrative business to criminal
cartels which pay taxes to no one and work to corrupt officials at
every level of government. Even cannabis use by millions of otherwise
law-abiding citizens leaves them in a compromised position vis-à-vis
the law. The drug trade spawns violence and instability, in producer
and transit countries as well as in neighbourhoods where local
distributors compete to control markets.

The criminal-justice system
haemorrhages taxpayers' money by arresting, investigating,
prosecuting and incarcerating mostly minor drug offenders, a policy
which has failed to reduce the supply of illicit drugs, but has
significantly increased the profits of drug-dealers. As David Cameron
once said, when it comes to drug policies, "it would be very
disturbing if some radical options were not at least looked at".

Now, for the first time, people in the
United Kingdom have been provided with an estimate of the costs of
the existing, prohibitionist drug policies toward cannabis, and of
the tax revenues that could be netted by reforming them. A study
commissioned by the Beckley Foundation finds that a shift away from
the present policy, and toward regulation and control of cannabis,
would reduce the costs of policing, prosecuting, and treating drug
users by an estimated £200-£300 million annually in England and
Wales.

Such a shift would also for the first time allow control of
the chemical composition and potency of the cannabis active elements,
thereby reducing its potential harm. Moreover, potential tax revenue
from licensing sales of cannabis in England and Wales might
amount to an estimated £400-£900 million.

The study, carried out by University of
Essex's Institute for Social and Economic Research, found that the
scope of the public debate on cannabis policy has been too narrow and
that there is a lack of hard evidence in favour of continued
criminalisation.

Current drug policies are not just a
matter of pounds and pence. Our current criminal justice-oriented
laws are being enforced in a grossly discriminatory manner. A recent
study—The Numbers in Black and White by Release and LSE—found
that in England and Wales black and Asian persons are respectively
six times and 2.5 times more likely to be stopped and searched for
drugs by the police than white persons. This is despite the fact that
drug use is lower among black and Asian people than among white
people.

This study also found that the criminal
justice authorities in London have charged black people with
possession of marijuana at a rate five times greater than the rate
for white people.

The economic and social costs of
prohibitionist drugs policies are massive and difficult to justify.
This new Beckley report provides the prime minister, every member of
the government, and other parliamentarians with the evidence they
need to argue that regulation of the cannabis market would not only
reduce the profits of organised crime, but improve the government
finances by at least £1.2 billion per annum. How long will it be
before the haemorrhaging of massive public funds is stopped?

Amanda Feilding is the founder and
director of the Beckley Foundation, which she set up in 1998,
following a lifelong interest in consciousness research. Amanda and
the Beckley Foundation also work on the global stage to carry out
drug policy research, inform thought leaders and the public, and
press for evidence-based policy reform.

To read the original article as published by Politics.co.uk, click on the link below.